1. Information literacy
competencies of health care
professionals in Ireland:
education, policy and practice
Kate Kelly
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
(RCSI)
EAHIL Workshop, Dublin. June 2009

2. Compare:
Information Literacy
 Recognise an
information need,
 Find information
 Critically evaluate
information and
 To use information
ethically
(Source:CILIP definition)
http://www.cilip.org.uk/policyadvocacy/l
earning/informationliteracy/definitio
n
Evidence-based Practice
1. Define the question
2. Search for the
evidence
3. Critically appraise the
evidence
4. Apply the evidence to
the patient or situation
5. Reflect on the process
(Source: Sackett, D.et al. Evidence-based
Medicine: how to practice and teach
EBM. 2000

3. Background:
 Recommendations in Irish
policy documents e.g.
“ensure that doctors are
practised in information
retrieval skills required by
evidence-based practices”
 Across disciplines,
undergraduate and
postgraduate level
 Where do providers get
these skills?
 Exploratory study

4. Literature Review:
 Best practices, e.g.,
ACRL
 International health
literature – high degree
of awareness across
disciplines
 Growing interest in
developing research
base
 Quality of studies
questionable
 Systematic reviews
identify research gaps
 Variable terminology
 No comparable
published studies in
health sciences in
Ireland
 Problem-based
learning links

5. Methods:
 Online questionnaire
 SurveyMonkey
 Faculty responsible for:
 Informatics or
 Research methods or
 Evidence-based practice
 35 Schools at 14 institutions
 6 Medicine
 14 Nursing
 3 Pharmacy
 2 Dental
 10 Allied Health
 Total sample size 119
individuals identified via
subject librarians,
departmental web sites and
colleagues (3 x larger than
estimated)

6. Results: Respondents
 42 respondents, overall response rate 35%
 Medicine (11), Nursing (19) Allied Health (11)
Pharmacy (1)
 73% (29) taught EBM; 70% (28) taught
research methods; 13 (33%) taught
informatics – cross over between EBM and
research methods
 Average number of years teaching
 Medicine 9 yrs; Nursing 5.5 yrs; Allied Health 5
yrs; Pharmacy 6 yrs.

7. Results: Familiarity with
concepts
Never
heard of
Heard of
don’t
know
meaning
Heard of
some
under-
standing
Fully aware
& fully
understand
Information
Literacy
5 % (2) 5% (2) 36% (14) 54% (21)
5 Steps of
EBP
8% (3) 10% (4) 22% (9) 60% (24)
PICO 45% (18) 5% (2) 8% (3) 42% (17)
CATS 35% (14) 5% (2) 28% (11) 32% (13)

8. Results: How skills taught?
Not
Taught
Most Common
Method
Question
Formulation
8%
(3)
Lecture 74% (29)
Hands on 46%(18)
Information
Retrieval
3%
(1)
Hands on 73% (29)
Demo 63%(25)
Evaluation of
Information
3%
(1)
Lecture 68% (26)
Hands On 47% (18)
Critical
Appraisal
0% Lecture 80% (31)
Hands on 56% (22)
Information
Management
11%
(4)
Lecture 64% (23)
Hands on 36% (13)

9. Results: How skills assessed?
Not
Taught
Not
Assessed
Graded
Assignment
OSCE
Question
Formulation
5%
(2)
13%
(5)
64%
(25)
8%
(3)
Information
Retrieval
5%
(2)
19%
(7)
62%
(23)
5%
(2)
Evaluation of
Information
5%
(2)
16%
(6)
71%
(27)
5%
(2)
Critical Appraisal 3% (1) 5% (2) 85% (33) 3% (1)
Information
Management
11%
(4)
17%
(6)
57%
(20)
3%
(1)

10. Results: Who teaches?
I Do Other
Faculty
Librarian Lib/Fac
Combo
Question
Formulation
74%
(29)
31%
(12)
8%
(3)
10%
(4)
Information
Retrieval
38%
(15)
15%
(6)
53%
(21)
45%
(18)
Evaluation of
Information
63%
(24)
24%
(9)
18%
(7)
26%
(10)
Critical
Appraisal
77%
(30)
44%
(17)
3%
(1)
3%
(1)
Information
Management
43%
(17)
35%
(14)
15%
(6)
30%
(12)

11. Who assesses?
I Do Other
Faculty
Librarian Lib/Fac
Combo
Question
Formulation
76%
(29)
37%
(14)
0% 3% (1)
Information
Retrieval
72%
(28)
33%
(13)
0% 8% (3)
Evaluation of
Information
74%
(28)
40%
(15)
0% 5% (2)
Critical
Appraisal
84%
(32)
40%
(15)
0% 3%(1)
Information
Management
68%
(24)
36%
(13)
0% 0%

12. Results: Importance of skills?
% rating skill
as 5=essential
Average rating on
scale of 1-5
Question
Formulation
64% (25) 4.38
Information
Retrieval
93% (37) 4.85
Evaluation of Info 82% (32) 4.74
Critical Appraisal 87% (34) 4.79
Information
Management
65% (26) 4.55

13. Results: Skills acquirement
Statement % saying it best
describes their opinion
Students already have these skills 0%
Taught once in curriculum & assessed 5% (2)
Taught once in curriculum & not
assessed
0%
Stand alone sessions outside
curriculum
2% (1)
Taught in skill building modules
across the years & assessed
73% (29)
Taught in skill building modules
across the years & not assessed
20% (8)

14. Background of faculty who
teach information retrieval
Don't teach information retrieval skills 19% (7)
No formal training – self taught 49% (18)
Informatics or bioinformatics 8% (3)
Library or information science 3% (1)
Computer Science 0%
Other (included CPD; MD training; MSc in
Research & Evaluation; Cochrane Review
author; “trained by librarians”)
22% (8)

15. Skills rated as “important”, “v.
important” or “essential” by 65% or
more of respondents: Basic Database Skills
 Find a journal article by words in the title of the article
 Find all journal articles written by a particular author
 Find journal articles on a specific topic using subject
headings from a controlled vocabulary, e.g., MESH,
CINAHL, EMTREE
 Find journal articles in a literature database using
keywords (their own words)
 Be able to combine controlled vocabulary and keywords
to find articles
 Use Boolean operators (AND, OR,NOT)
 Limit results by common limits such as gender, date, age
group, publication type, and language

16. Skills rated as “important”, “v.
important” or “essential” by 65% or
more of respondents: Advanced
Database Skills
 Understand the structure of a database record
 Be able to field search
 Search for a specific phrase
 Use wildcards for variant spellings
 Use truncation or stemming to search for variant words or plurals
 Use subheadings to qualify a search term
 Narrow a search using specific commands such as “focus”
 Broaden search results using specific commands such as
“explode”
 Use citation searching
 Understand how to develop a comprehensive search strategy

17. Skills rated as “important”, “v.
important” or “essential” by 65% or
more of respondents: Search Engines
 Use more than one
search engine
 Use advanced search
features of Internet
search engines such as
date, domain, URL,
document type
 Force a phrase match
 Include/exclude words
from results
Advanced Search Tips |

18. Skills rated as “important”, “v.
important” or “essential” by 65% or
more of respondents: Citing and
Catalogues
Citing
 Use citation manager
software, e.g., Endnote,
Refworks, to manage and
manipulate citations
 Reference their sources
appropriately
Catalogues
 Search for a specific book
by title words
 Search for books by a
specific author
 Search for books on a
specific topic
 Find a book on the shelf by
call/class number
 Interpret information about
electronic journals in a
library catalogue

19. Not important/understood?
Skill Not
Important
Not
Understood
Use adjacency or
proximity operators
30% (11) 22% (8)
Use clinical retrieval
filters
22% (8) 24% (9)
Understand vocabulary
mapping & algorithms
27% (14) 14% (5)
Understand precision
& recall
23% (8) 19% (7)

20. Some Quotes:
 “Many students require focused information retrieval skills which each
module seeks to identify for them however this would work much
better if it were built on the basis of having a study skills/information
retrieval skills programme completed”
 “This caused me to reflect on course and what needs to be improved”
 “Some of the skills/competencies I have said are important or
essential for a medical graduate I would not be able to do myself as I
either haven’t been trained or have forgotten how to do (atrophy with
time), and information retrieval has developed substantially in the last
10-15 years, so health professionals need to have their skills updated
as well- an essential part of continuing medical education”
 “Most if not all of the topics included should be essential
learning for all graduate health professionals”

21. Recommendations:
1. Make the acquisition of these skills explicit outcomes of health
sciences curricula and give equal attention to all, currently
teaching critical appraisal dominates
2. Skills be taught in skill building modules and assessed
3. Faculty need to be more aware of what is actually being taught
in “library sessions” - active rather than passive collaboration
4. Librarians teaching information retrieval should have explicit
learning outcomes for information retrieval sessions
5. Librarians should assess information retrieval skills and
information literacy skills should be assessed on an individual
basis rather than within group project type assessment
6. More research
7. Establish a working group or community of practice to progress
these findings.

22. Limitations of the Study:
 Survey question issues
 Face validity only
 Timing – faculty availability during Summer
 Overall response rate
 No distinction between undergraduate and
postgraduate
 Lack of balance of methodology, e.g. focus group
methodology to explore and clarify terminology and
understanding
 Pharmacy results based on one respondent
 No dental

23. Contact Details:
Kate Kelly
Librarian
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Email: katekelly@rcsi.ie
Thank You!